[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

As to the link through music, well, I wonder if we need to clarify what precisely was the original music of Arda. Was it a music of sound, as we normally associate the word, or was it rather a music of proportion, order, and measure? Music and the history of music is not really my balliwick, but I think that originally the word implied order and proportion without sound--the mathematical relationships of the universe.

I am actually not that much acquainted with this matter as well, but what you said reminded me - any resemblance with the "music of the spheres" and the Pythagorean view of the universe? There may be some parallel, or connection, even unconscious. I would have to think of it.

Yet Goldberry's "washing day" and the implied control over weather might imply some relationship less controlled and even, possibly, aligned with chaos? The female element in early folklore often pertains to elements outside human order.

Water is also a culturally derived signifier of cleansing--Goldberry's "washing day", to say nothing of the generations of women who wash their clothes in the waters of a river's edge, throughout human cultures--so that works against the chaotic element, unless, for example, the chaos of the drowning of Numenor is regarded as of just proportion and order.

Well, why have you thought of chaos in the first place? When you mentioned it, the first thing I also thought about was "washing" in some deeper meaning (the more if Goldberry is "higher" spirit and there is something more behind her "simple" look; the more if she were associated with Ulmo) - indeed, cleansing looks pretty good idea to me, especially at this time, when we know - confirming with the UT and such - that all the Old Forest and Barrow-Downs were awakened by the Riders, and all evil things were stirring; the day before Old Man Willow trapped the Hobbits. What if Goldberry's "washing day" is, apart from the obvious connotations, indeed some mending of this, putting at least the Forest to rest? I see this as a pretty good idea.